Introduction

Everywhere you look today, games are striving to increase the player’s immersion. 3D accelerators are being made as fast and versatile as possible to power the most spectacular and realistic of graphics in today’s PC titles. Games are also taking advantage of 3D-positional audio enhancements designed to give the player the experience of having a full environment around him/her. Input devices now are even becoming input and output devices, as they provide tactile motion feedback, jerking and vibrating in response to events occurring in the game.

Some people feel that the force-feedback phenomenon has gone to slight extremes, judging by some of the devices we see on the market today. Aura Interactive, for instance, markets a line of seating pads that take audio feedback and scan the frequencies to provide force-feedback…well…to your rump. Now, when people say they’re kicking your ass in Unreal Tournament, they mean it. Even more bizarre is the iFeel mouse produced by Logitech. The iFeel mouse is designed for both the productivity-oriented and the gamer. Still, most hardcore gamers, myself included, scoff at the notion of a “force feedback mouse”. I’m more than willing for Logitech to prove me wrong, though. *hint* *hint*

Of all the force-feedback devices I’ve seen or heard of on the market, Evergreen’s RumbleFX headphones most took me by surprise. Upon hearing about this product, I suddenly had visions of myself wearing a neck brace. Thankfully, the RumbleFX headphones took me completely by surprise, in that not only were they orthopedically harmless, but they actually did enhance the game experience when I used them!

Description/Testing

The RumbleFX headphones work by analyzing the audio waves passed out to the headphones. When certain low-frequency ranges are hit with enough amplitude, the headphones add a vibratory feedback response. Basically, they boom with the bass, although it’s not all about bass with these. Installation is totally simple. You just plug them in, insert the batteries (Which are included), and fire up something fun to play. Since the headphones work passively, without requiring any special setup, they’ll even work with that old DOS copy of Jill of the Jungle that you *know* you still play.

The effect of the RumbleFX headphones is boosted by the use of 3D audio technologies, of course. If you use A3D or EAX in any of your games, the natural audio side effects of those technologies will be drawn out by the headphones since, again, they work by interpreting the sound. Admittedly, I got my hopes up in thinking about this ability, but the realism involved in the way the headphones means that the effect is limited. Realistically speaking, the only reason you should ever feel the headphones vibrate or shake is if something in a game comes in direct contact with you or causes you to move. So why would the vibration be made any different if you were in a cave or a long hallway? With that in mind, the headphones work exactly as they should.

Since I happened to be playing Battle for Naboo at the time that I got these headphones, I tested them in this scenario first. The shaking they gave when I got hit by missiles or any other projectiles was good, although sometimes I was getting feedback responses even though the explosions were actually occurring nearby. This was no fault of the headphones, however, but just a fault with the game in that explosions that occurred 100 feet away still sounded just as loud. Even so, the feedback felt more or less appropriate, and just made the game feel more fun.

Next, I popped in Diablo II. There aren’t very many explosions in Diablo II, so I would up mostly experiencing the feedback provided by the background music. The feedback in this case was rather subtle and non-interfering. It actually was a very pleasant experience using these headphones here, and prompted me to try them out with a few music CDs as well. I wasn’t expecting much in this case, since most of the music I like isn’t heavy on the bass.

Still, I knew I had a few good candidates, so I went and got my “Lost Highway” soundtrack, “Dig Your Own Hole” by Chemical Brothers, and “Becoming X Remixed” by Sneaker Pimps. The effect was certainly noticeable here, and a little annoying. I’m used to my ears being battered around as it is with my excellent Sony Digital Reference headphones, but the bass combined with the rattling and shaking of the headphones was rather uncomfortable. They put a lot of stress on my eardrums, and left me feeling a bit on the side of nausea when I was done. I recovered quickly, though, and decided to give these headphones the ultimate bass benchmark. So, I loaded up Sonique, and opened up…

AllYourBase.mp3…Yup…The MP3 music track by The Laziest Men on Mars. Needless to say, my ears were once again given the workout, but when the music was intentionally bassy, things weren’t so bad. It really did make the experience more engaging and realistic.

Conclusion

Downsides of the headphones are few. They’re quite large, even in comparison to my Sony reference ‘phones. The Sony headphones are still rather light in their profile, though. The Evergreen headphones feel a bit heavy, and they don’t clamp as tightly on my head as other headphones I’ve used were able to do. Thus they always had a feeling as if they were sliding off my head, and on several occasions they actually did. Battery power also means that the headphones have limited life while operating in feedback mode. Unfortunately, it’s easy to forget that they’re powered on when you take them off, so be prepared to replace those batteries often. Even with their generous lifetimes of 20 hours in this set, they won’t make up for my own incompetence and forgetfulness! I think it might have been relatively easy to include a sensor that shuts off the headphones after detecting a certain time of inactivity, but that would’ve probably greatly reduced the possible battery life of the headphones.

One final niggle is that the treble response on the headphones seems a bit dulled. This means that they’re not the greatest all-purpose headphones. This is kind of a tradeoff, though, since most games that you’d use these headphones with aren’t going for symphonic perfection anyway…Bottom line is that if you do anything outside of the gaming realm (And probably action gaming mostly), keep your old headphones or speakers around, unless they’re old Labtecs. If they’re new Labtecs, then they’re probably okay. :-)

So the end result? These headphones were impressively good. They performed well and did everything they said they would, and more. There was hardly a problem with them at all, and they turned out to be really…um…neat! The retail price on them is a bit high, in my opinion, but Evergreen takes the initiative of directing their website visitors to businesses who sell them for less…quite an unusual business strategy, but one I wish many other vendors did!

They’re definitely something you can live without if you have to choose between these and a RAM upgrade, but they’re also not just a “fad” gizmo either. Give ‘em a shot…they’re worth it.

Rating: 8.5/10 SystemLogistics

Re-Printed From SLCentral

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